“Improving your OTT Workflow” is a panel discussion from Streaming Media Connect 2021. Zype’s own Steven Tripsas joined representatives from CrunchyRoll, Sky, and CBS/Paramount to discuss how businesses can adapt their technology in order to improve their efficiency when delivering OTT video content.

You can watch the full panel from the Streaming Media Connect event below.

To learn more about how Zype can improve your OTT Workflow, you can request a demo here and speak directly with our team.

VOD: Improving Your OTT Workflow - Streaming Media On Demand Webinar

Improving Your OTT Workflow - Streaming Media Connect 2021 Panel Discussion

Netflix serves over 6 billion hours of content per month, globally, to nearly every country in the world.

Building a system that can scale to that volume of customers while delivering high-definition video with zero lag requires significant engineering effort. So let’s  dive deep into Netflix's technology stack and cloud infrastructure to examine what tools, processes, and architecture they use to deliver their high-quality content to viewers around the world.

Before the era of "Netflix and chill," remember when Netflix physically delivered mail-order DVDs to your doorstep?

The company racked and stacked physical servers in on-premise data centers that they owned. These data centers housed databases and applications Netflix used to track customers, maintain inventory, and store customer billing information.

By the time broadband became common and everyone owned a smartphone, Netflix needed to deliver videos to computers, internet-connected TVs, and mobile phones in order to evolve.  This meant moving away from a traditional data center and harnessing the power of the public cloud.

In 2008, Netflix started migrating its on-premise servers and applications into Amazon Web Services (AWS) after experiencing an on-premise data center outage that stopped the business for three days. Startled by the lack of resiliency, they were able to move 100% of all assets into the cloud over seven years and remain one of the pioneers of cloud computing.  

After partnering with AWS, it found that operating costs had gone down and their price per stream was a fraction of the cost. From there, Netflix passed those savings on to its customers. 

Cost reduction was not the main reason we decided to move to the cloud. However, our cloud costs per streaming started ending up being a fraction of those in the data center -- a welcome side benefit.
Netflix blog

By utilizing cloud services through the AWS architecture, Netflix had the flexibility of adjusting scale according to the services used and was (and still are) able to provide these services at a monthly charge that customers felt was reasonable.

In 2000, Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix for $50 million. When the deal fell through, it turned out to be the best thing to happen to Netflix. Over the next 17 years, Netflix had tremendous growth that took its market cap to over $242 billion. Part of this growth can be attributed to its migration to a refined cloud architecture.

When AWS teamed up with Netflix to grow its streaming service and do away with on-premise data centers, the focus shifted to engineering efforts and advancing streaming service capabilities within the Netflix AWS architecture.

However, while Netflix found a solution to scaling, it still needed to find solutions for bandwidth and lag-free video streaming. In the early days of the web, the bandwidth required for video streaming was challenging to overcome when developing these platforms. AWS had the solution that Netflix engineers were looking for, and it came in the shape of a cloud.

We have this insight because Netflix is prominent in the cloud community for sharing their knowledge during the migration to the cloud, as seen on their blog:

We rely on the cloud for all of our scalable computing and storage needs — our business logic, distributed databases and big data processing/analytics, recommendations, transcoding, and hundreds of other functions that make up the Netflix application.
-Yury Izrailevsky, Stevan Vlaovic and Ruslan Meshenberg of Netflix

Taking a peek into their architecture, Netflix maintains hundreds of AWS accounts that isolate the various parts of their business, from Subscriptions to Content Delivery to Personalized Recommendations.

Netflix can quickly develop features because all of its engineers are empowered to launch resources in their appropriate accounts without getting approvals from various parts of the company. By utilizing AWS Organizations and Account Units, Netflix can organize their engineering teams' applications, providing engineers autonomy and speed.

Within these AWS accounts, engineers use a myriad of technologies to deliver high-fidelity video streaming.

Let's start with how Netflix can serve videos. All content is stored in object storage like Amazon S3 and cached using AWS CloudFront. This enables Netflix to distribute video content all around the world with low latency speeds.

Videos need to be ultimately transcoded into various formats for optimal viewing based on the device used for watching. Connected TV and mobile video is transcoded differently from desktop videos because of the different screen sizes, resolution, and network availability.

Take, for example streaming from a phone. You will go in and out of signal depending on where you live, and in order to continuously deliver video, the service needs to adjust and buffer so you dynamically have a consistent viewing experience. This transcoding is called H.264, and Netflix can do this by harnessing the power of AWS Elastic Transcoder, which takes videos and formats them appropriately.

Video streaming, however, is only a small part of the picture.

Customers have a smorgasbord of choices when watching videos on Netflix. To keep customer engagement and retention high, Netflix employs a personalization algorithm to help uncover videos that a customer may be interested in based on their previous viewing history. This means that all interactions when watching a video must be recorded.

Netflix does this by utilizing data streaming technologies like Kafka and storing data in NoSQL databases like DynamoDB – a key-value and document database achieving single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It's a wholly managed, multi-region, multi-active, robust database with fixed security that can handle over 10 trillion requests per day. During peak viewing, this tech stack can support over 20 million requests per second.

Netflix engineers can then write applications deployed on AWS EC2 or AWS Lambda that accesses this data to compute personalized videos to show. For this reason, many of the fastest-growing companies such as Airbnb, Lyft, and Redfin, also industry-leaders such as Capital One, Samsung, and Toyota, depend on the scale and execution of DynamoDB to maintain critical workloads.

In all areas, Netflix's tech stack wins out above its competition. J.D. Power and Associates published a survey that found Netflix customers reported fewer service problems than other popular streaming services. 

By eliminating its need for a large data center of its own, which would require costly upgrades over time, Netflix had a fluid infrastructure that was easy to adjust as needed for more beneficial uses of data resources. 

However, not all data is stored in a database and some is better suited to be stored on disks. Netflix is known to employ Hadoop to aggregate various data types and move them into data warehouses or other databases across the company. Netflix has data science teams that sift through this data to conduct business analytics, like determining how many customers are watching a specific movie or how likely someone will unsubscribe from the service.

While it is impossible to analyze every part of Netflix's business, the above describes a few major components for delivering online video.

To enable these features, developers need to quickly deploy their code, which is tested and can be rolled back if a bug is introduced. This is no easy feat, and Netflix has developed a very sophisticated Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline for providing a mechanism to deploy cloud applications.

Netflix invented and open-sourced their tool, called Spinnaker, which allows developers to make small changes, roll them out with automated tests, and then get them live to a small subset of users. When the confidence level that a bug has not been introduced increases, the changes then automatically rolled out globally over time.

One of the major discussion points when moving to the cloud is security and Netflix has publicly documented its security practices. It locks content by region, so a movie that the company only has rights to in The United States, for example, does not make its way to other regions. Netflix does this by employing DRM solutions in the cloud.

Internally, Netflix uses AWS IAM to lock permissions for employees and applications with the least permission privilege. Even if a user becomes compromised, the damage they can do is minimal, as they would not have access to the entire set of assets in the cloud.

Being in the cloud also means using SaaS products internally to improve the productivity of the workforce. Netflix uses Jira software for managing engineering tasks and Confluence for documentation requirements.

With a large workforce, managing passwords is difficult, so Netflix employs single-sign-on technologies like OneLogin to allow access to various SaaS products without remembering hundreds of different passwords. SaaS tools are constantly changing, and knowing Netflix, they will be adapting to be more efficient.

The Netflix tech stack incorporates multiple programming languages, including Java, JavaScript, Python, Kotlin, and Swift. Netflix's scalability and security are the results of its use of Python. Kotlin comes in handy with other programming languages by granting necessary tooling support. 

Python is one of the world's fastest-growing programming languages and is used for everything from operations management/analysis to networking and security. Netflix utilizes Python throughout the entire content lifecycle. Netflix’s  OTT architecture also supports Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for innovations like data-economical encoding and user personalization – giving each user a unique experience and ensuring the content presented to them is personalized to their preferences.

The Netflix tech stack also contains fully comprehensive libraries that improve user experience (UX) and acts as a highlight for the development process. Netflix secures its user-friendly interfaces with React (also known as Reactjs/React.js/ReactJS), the JavaScript UI library, and applies NodeJS as a framework and WinJS to aid in Windows applications development.

The user never sees the technology stack that goes into streaming their favorite content, but the Netflix engineers are constantly working to improve its platform. For this reason, Netflix has been able to remain the global leader in streaming video.

In fact, Netflix is so synonymous with streaming that the word “Netflix” has become a verb in our daily vernacular.

Netflix has worked continuously to improve video quality for its members worldwide. One significant breakthrough in its continuous attempts to improve UX has been what Netflix calls its Per-title Encode Optimization. Introduced in December 2016, Per-Title Encode Optimization introduced the idea of customizing encoding based on the complexity for better resolution and bitrate selection for each video sequence. 

This coding language provides a significant improvement over previously framed resolution and bitrate generation. It does this by taking into account the characteristics of video and optimizing coding performance by selecting parameters. 

Another remarkable milestone has been Per-Chunk Encode Optimization as part of the Mobile Encodes for Downloads initiative - the concept of equalizing rate-distortion slopes that work and provide notable enhancements. 

GitHub is another application Netflix uses for code collaboration and version control. They also use LogicMonitor for execution monitoring and Apteligent (previously known as Crittercism) for mobile error monitoring.

The ambitious team at Netflix is the perfect example of how a company can keep pace with technological advances while still remaining core to its primary deliverable. For consumers, the technology powering the backend is unknown, but the amount of streaming it deploys showcases that they have a winning service that continues to achieve remarkable growth.

Building Netflix's Backend… The Easier Way

Developing video on demand requires a large engineering staff, hundreds of millions of dollars in cloud computing (if you are going to operate at a Netflix scale), and a decoupled architecture that allows applications to scale so that they are resilient in the face of performance issues and outages.

For most companies, building this infrastructure is either too expensive, too time-consuming, too resource-intensive, or too risky. For many, emulating the Netflix tech stack is like a pipe dream; even if you know how they have built things out, it doesn’t make it easy to imitate.

This is why Zype was created. We’ve developed a  powerful suite of products that allows you to manage your video across every channel from a single platform with all the built-in tools you need to build or augment your existing OTT video tech stack. From VideoMeta CMS, Video CRM, encoding, playout, and content delivery tools, Zype leads the way for companies to use pre-existing technologies to build and scale their video infrastructure. 

Zype can help offload many of the heavy lifting operations required to deliver OTT video. I encourage you to check us out.

Netflix Tech Stack: Breaking Down Netflix's OTT Architecture

We dive into Netflix's technology stack to examine what tools and architecture they use to deliver their high-quality content streaming services.

The logistical and financial costs associated with a DIY video infrastructure have made many companies rethink their video stack. The need to innovate and deliver exceptional user experiences means that product and development teams need to take a concentrated look at where they focus their time, money, and resources, and consider whether they can tap into existing technologies that still allow them to focus on differentiation.

The pressure to innovate leads many video teams to the critical decision of whether to build, maintain, and scale their video stack in-house or purchase from one or many software or platform providers to achieve the streaming capabilities they need. 

When it comes to this build versus buy choice, there are pros and cons to both. Below, we will compare the build versus buy decision as it relates to video platforms - specifically OTT distribution - so you can better determine what is best for your company.

Should You Build or Buy Your Video Infrastructure Platform? 

Video streaming has many development-intensive challenges inherently built into it: video players, compression, delivery, content management systems, ads, storage, CRMs, and more are all parts of the very complex streaming ecosystem.

From the consumer perspective, the needed functionality and features of a desirable video streaming experience mean that brands of all sizes have to measure up to the most popular platforms or risk a poor user experience that ultimately results in churn. 

Teams are tasked with build amazing video streaming experiences and control their innovation cycles. However, not all product teams have deep expertise in broadcast/video engineering, software engineering, and other various skill sets, making these innovation cycles challenging.

But streaming providers don’t need to be overloaded if they find the human resource challenge too cumbersome. They have another option: to use, or “buy,” existing video platforms and APIs that connect and integrate with the systems they have in place. Today, virtually all the moving pieces of a formerly disparate video ecosystem are available to complement one’s needs. 

While not all companies may fit in one build-it or buy-it bucket, it’s important to consider the pros and cons of each.

Build It: Pros & Cons of Building a Video Infrastructure In-House

By birth, the streaming industry is based on innovation. Perhaps this is why so many companies are wed to the build-it approach. For an industry that got its roots in disrupting traditional cable, much of the pros on building are versed in innovation and control.

For many, owning 100 percent of one’s IP means controlling all innovation cycles of OTT distribution. In a fast-moving, technology-reliant industry where the streaming wars get more challenging each year, having an internal infrastructure allows them flexibility and velocity to act how they want, when they want.

Developing video infrastructure in-house offers the benefit of building and investing in tech assets that create value for customers. Examples of these assets include admin panels, video players, content recommendation engines, or localization UX.

Given human capital constraints around costs and skill sets, perhaps the most common reason companies hit roadblocks with the choice to build is cost. Underestimating the total cost of ownership and management of video infrastructure can delay innovation.

At a minimum, the development team needed to build, optimize, and scale a video infrastructure includes: 1-2 backend developers, 1 UI/UX designer, 1 frontend developer, 1 project manager, and 1-2 QA specialists. This team also needs to be well versed in the various requirements of each platform, as there is great disparity across the different endpoints available for streaming video. 

Apart from human resources, lies the technologies or infrastructure needed to manage the video platform. Due to the pace at which these technologies change, resources need to be allocated to maintain or scale to keep up with demand. If your team is building this platform from scratch, there is a real risk that by the time your build is complete, it is already outdated. 

Buy It: Pros & Cons of Integrating Existing Tech into Your Video Infrastructure

When you think of it, most technology heavily leverages purchasing or outsourcing for certain parts or features. For example, we used to build rack servers and storage, and now we buy into cloud providers like AWS. When we do a Google search for the weather, we don’t see a result from Google’s weather prediction radar, we see their integration with weather.com. We don’t build our own text messaging services into our software, we integrate with API services like Twilio.

As it seems, most development teams are accustomed to utilizing pre-existing integrations to focus on innovating in other areas. This is why the decision to buy has a solid case for OTT distribution.

Many of the cons of building video infrastructure in-house are the pros of buying or integrating APIs into your existing infrastructure. If we consider the innovation cycle top-of-mind for many video streaming providers, we can make a strong argument for this strategy.

For starters, if a development team no longer has to focus on building commoditized products like databases, CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application services, or customer management systems, they can use their resources for innovation cycles that help them differentiate from competitors. 

If a video API already exists to manage customers and commerce, for example, teams can benefit from that negated task and benefit from:

Faster time to market: This allows you to monetize your products more quickly, save on development costs, and rely on existing, proven technology from which to build.

Simplify and streamline distribution: Taking away one task allows your team to focus on others. With multiple video APIs already in existence, the benefits only compound, as you will leverage more integrators and connectors.

Scalability: With integrations, you can pay for scaling on an as-needed basis. Rather than buying more server space for customers that may never use it, you will scale up when you need and scale down when you don’t.

Reliability: Because you are paying for a service or services that other teams actively manage, you can rely on proven technologies that meet your demands and your viewers’ demands. This also means you can rely on experts to analyze and predict needed adaptations instead of using your team’s resources.

Furthermore, reliance on a trusted 3rd-party API means that you can leverage technology that stays up-to-date.    

The major con of leveraging an external team to develop and maintain their APIs is that their products may not move at the speed you’d like. Because you don’t own their innovation cycles and instead are relying on them, there may be a time when the existing features just don’t meet your expectations. 

However, this is part of the benefit of using integrations and connectors to begin with. There are so many options available that product and development teams can strategically utilize those that meet their needs and build those that don’t.

If it isn’t already clear that we are fans of supporting your video infrastructure with integrations and connectors, we do believe that there are many instances where custom builds may be better than buys. 

These customizations are generally reserved for true value-adds or technologies that are simply not available via existing integrations. For example:

2-way video integrations (ex. Live streaming personal training)

Website (requirements are highly personal to an organization)

Custom analytics reporting / BI Dashboard

Advanced user profiles / content feedback + scoring

Leveraging Existing Video APIs is a Proven Strategy for Success

Innovation has always been a focus of streaming providers who want to differentiate themselves from the pack. However, when it comes to launching an innovative video stack, building the technology necessary to create a large-scale video platform can often prove to be a hindrance to even the greatest development and product teams.

With full-stack video API solutions such as Zype already in the marketplace, your team’s engineers and developers can make the smart choice to buy integrations and connectors and leverage their resources more effectively on the tech that makes them unique. 

When time-to-market, affordability, scalability, and future-proofing is at stake, the best option is to buy.

At Zype, we’ve built a comprehensive and connected API-first video infrastructure that can relieve the technical burden from engineers and developers, leaving more time and budget for content innovation.

Interested in learning more about how Video APIs can fit into your build or buy decision? Check out this post. 

OTT Distribution: Breaking Down the Build vs Buy Strategies

We compare the build versus buy business models - video APIs, integrators, connectors - as they relate to video platforms and  OTT distribution.

According to a recent Deloitte report on digital media trends, 47 percent of Americans now watch free ad-supported streaming TV services, or “FASTs.” FASTS are any free, ad-supported streaming video service that may include on-demand, linear programming, or both. 

The linear TV aspect of FASTS is essentially a free version of cable TV that mimics the lean-back experience of linear TV, with a programming grid. Some of the most popular FAST services include Pluto TV, Tubi, The Roku Channel, Peacock, Samsung TV+, and Xumo.

CNBC reports that traditional media executives expect about 25 million U.S. households to cancel their longstanding pay-TV subscriptions over the next five years, providing the assumption many of these consumers will seek free, ad-supported alternatives.

The pandemic has much to do with these changes, but as the Deloitte survey mentions, “the COVID-19 story isn’t so much “before and after” as it is “before and FASTer.”

While the average US home now subscribes to four OTT video services, the costs of stacking multiple subscription-based offerings are too much for many consumers. As a result, more consumers are canceling services for those they find to suit their interests at any given moment. On the contrary, you never really cancel a FAST, and Deloitte’s market research found that 37% of consumers enjoy the variety of content options available to them on free streaming services. 

Pluto TV has a global reach of nearly 36 million monthly active users, with 28.4 million in the United States, and Tubi saw its viewership jump 58 percent (to 2.5 billion hours) in 2020. Its audience reach is almost 80 percent greater than the top 25 cable networks. 

The success of FASTS can be attributed to:

Carry lower ad-loads than pay TV’s average of 12 minutes and 12 seconds per hour

BYOD (Bring your own device) FASTS are available on every mobile and Connected TV device and come pre-installed on many smart TV platforms such as Samsung, LG, Roku, and Vizio, which significantly increases their adoption

So while the business model of linear TV (paying $200 per month for access to a certain number of linear channels) is dying, linear TV as a viewing experience is proving to be as popular as ever.

Suppose you are a video content distributor with a wealth of content you’d like to get eyeballs on. In that case, you’re probably wondering how FASTS and ad-supported linear streaming can improve your OTT distribution strategy.

A FAST channel is a linear channel that appears on a free, ad-supported streaming TV service. Like its cable channel counterpart, a FAST channel is delivered in a scheduled manner. For example, if a viewer wants to watch a specific show, such as the original Unsolved Mysteries series, the viewer must tune into the channel at a particular time. The content on FAST channels generally falls into three broad buckets;  older TV shows or movies, packaged digital-first video clips, and streaming services leveraging library content to make their owned-and-operated services stand out, such as ViacomCBS using Pluto to promote two of its series, “Clarice” and “The Equalizer.”

Contingent upon many factors, including channel placement, ad fill rate, average CPM, content quality, duration, refresh rate, FAST channels can generate anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000+ in gross monthly revenue.

Each FAST service offers a mix of its own 24/7 curated linear channels in addition to channels that third-party content distributors operate. When considering FAST as part of your distribution strategy, here’s what you need to know.

These are channels that are curated and operated by the FAST service. For example, Xumo’s Action, Comedy, Westerns, SciFi & Fantasy, Black Cinema, Action, and Documentaries channels. 

Who’s it great for? Content owners with small libraries, B2B content distributors, independent movie studios, etc.

These channels bear your company’s name or service and house your programming. Examples of branded FAST channels include Cheddar, Crackle, FilmRise Free Movies, Hallmark Movies & More. Unlike theme channels operated by the FAST services, you are responsible for your channel’s operation, which requires an investment in resources and technology.

Who’s it great for? SVOD/AVOD streaming services, digital-first content producers, news organizations, etc.

Considerations when launching your own branded FAST channel

You’ll want to keep in mind two areas when launching your FAST channel: content quality and scheduling. 

Content Quantity - As a reference point, you’ll want to launch with 100-250 hours of content and refresh 10-20 hours of your content each month. When viewers come back to your channel, you don’t want them seeing the same content they’ve seen before.

Scheduling - There are two primary ways of scheduling your programming on a  FAST channel, looped playlists and scheduled. As the name suggests, a looped playlist takes a playlist of on-demand videos and loops them. Although they’re simple to program, looped playlists don’t have the look-and-feel that you’d expect from a traditional TV channel. Scheduled playlists are more involved to schedule but can incite better viewer engagement habits.

How Content Owners can Harness FAST’s Potential

TV[R]EV research estimates that OTT will amass about 25 billion in ad-spend from advertisers by 2025, with FASTs to receive the lion’s share. 

If you are a content distributor considering your FAST channel’s launch, you may be wondering the best way to get started. Zype Playout helps video product teams navigate the challenging linear live broadcasting landscape and grow their distribution footprint across multiple FAST services. 

It also provides an all-encompassing solution to facilitate a FAST streaming solution for companies of all sizes. Playout is a programming, monetization, distribution, and analytics platform with the fastest stream start times in the industry. 

Playout offers workflows for selecting and ordering playlists of videos to create linear channel schedules, scheduling broadcasts, and encoding and packaging linear channels for RTMP or HLS based distribution. SSAI is supported, with integrations available for FreeWheel and Google Ad Manager.

Zype Playout takes the guesswork out of distributing FAST channels. Learn more here. 

Free Ad Supported Streaming: Tap Into the Massive Audience Behind the Free TV Movement

FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming): Look deeper into why linear OTT is already the next big thing in ad-supported streaming.

This month Zype released several new product updates including improved tvOS templates and enhanced dynamic parameter options.

Level Up Your App with the Updated Zype tvOS Template

Zype Apple TV applications are programmed in Swift, allowing you the most modern features available to tvOS apps. As part of our commitment to ensure our templates meet the highest quality market standards, we’ve updated our template application to be Swift 5 based, the most recent iteration of the Swift programming language. Enjoy a sleek new top menu design as well as better performance and compatibility with the latest XCode versions. Learn more about the update and review our FAQs here.

Deeper Connectivity for Ad Servers through New Ad Macros on Self-Hosted Content

If you have self-hosted content in your library, you may have leveraged Zype’s ability to generate dynamic URL parameters against self-hosted manifest requests to connect your ad server stack. For example, you may have imported an HLS stream from your existing hosting provider or SSAI server, which might require dynamic information about the user in order to optimize ad fill. 

Now we are offering even more dynamic parameter options that can be used as URL replacements for self-hosted manifests. We’ve added support for app_bundle along with app_domain and device_model, to name a few. View the entire list of supported dynamic manifest parameters and their uses here.

Want to check out more of Zype's latest product updates? Read more here.

Level Up Your Apple TV Apps With Zype's Updated Template

The first half of 2020 saw unprecedented streaming growth. Netflix nears 200 million subscribers, and Disney+ racks up 60 million in record time, there seems to be no end in sight for the streaming wars. As Americans continue to spend the majority of their days at home, more and more time is being spent behind screens. 

We’ve put together a round up of major linear TV and OTT statistics to help you keep up with it all, starting with an overview of the industry.

The OTT industry is growing faster than most people expected. The switch from traditional TV to either an ad-supported or subscription-based streaming service is becoming more and more common, especially in the US. In April alone, there was a 198% increase in OTT traffic. It’s important to note that viewers use multiple devices to consume content. On average, OTT users access video content on three devices across three different OTT services. (OpenX), so both consumer and device level analytics are a must for leaders in the space.

There are over 300 OTT providers in the U.S. ( LemonLight)

As of June 2020, 69.8 million US homes use OTT services. (Comscore)

The top five OTT services by number of subscribers are ( Fox Business)

80% of US homes have at least one Internet-Connected TV device. (Leichtman Research)

68% (up from 47% in 2019) of US Wi-Fi households have an OTT device ( Marketing Charts)

42.2 million OTT households use streaming boxes/sticks, making it the most popular OTT device. (Marketing Charts)

On average, OTT users access video content on three devices across three different OTT services. (OpenX)

According to eMarketer, 55.1 million people will no longer watch traditional pay TV by 2022

Money is to be made and spent in OTT. While there is some apprehension around how many OTT services can realistically coexist, as we just covered, consumers are craving more content and are willing to pay for what they want. This demand is pushing OTT services to spend more, but with the potential to reap some major financial benefits. 

Disney+ is the top spender in OTT content at $27.8 billion spent in 2019. (Variety)

Netflix is second in spending at $15 billion. (Variety)

Global OTT revenues are predicted to grow by $16 billion in 2020 (Media Post) with 40% of consumers willing to spend at least $20 a month on streaming services (Marketing Charts)

OTT ad spend will reach $5 billion in 2020 ( SpotX) and OTT ad revenue is expected to reach over $158 billion by 2024 (Forbes)

Original content is king in the world of OTT. This makes investing in a single, easy-to-use video platform for distributing and monetizing OTT content key. As content production continues to increase over the years, organization of content both on the users end and back-end system will be of the utmost importance.

Amazon Prime is number one in terms of library size with over 63,500 hours of content (Reviews.org). In comparison, Disney+ launched at the end of 2019 with less than 4,000 hours of content. (Screen Rant)

Out of the top 20 most streamed shows in 2019, only one was not on Netflix. ( Forbes)

So far in 2020, the Tiger King docu-series is the number one streamed show on Netflix. (Forbes) and The Mandalorian takes number one for Disney Plus (Business Insider)

In 2019, Netflix release 371 original shows and movies, which is a 54.6% from 2018. (Variety)

Quibi, one of the newest OTT players, is set to release 175 shows by the end of 2020 (Cnet).

It might not come as a surprise that the largest consumers of OTT services are Millennials and Generation Z, but adoption among other age groups continues to grow each year.  In fact, 27 percent of consumers aged 45 and older stream an SVOD service daily. (Forbes)

And it definitely shouldn’t be surprising to see dropping viewing time of traditional TV, as satellite and TV companies lost 6 million customers in 2019, according to Variety. 

An estimated 2 million Americans cut the cord in 2019 (Business Wire).

Average time spent watching OTT video content is set to reach 62 minutes a day this year, which is a 23% increase from 2019 (eMarketer).

Four-fifths of US Consumers have at least one streaming service. (Deloitte)

Consumers are most likely to select their streaming service based on its range of content and are most likely to cancel based on price point (Deloitte).

60% of viewers say that they spend more of their viewing time on an online source over a pay-TV service. (TV Technology)

Aside from Connected TV devices, mobile is leading in terms of video streaming minutes, but desktop saw higher growth year over year. (Comscore)

25 Linear TV & OTT Statistics That Will Shock You (2020 Edition)

Zype Wins Third Stevie Award for Customer Service and Support

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Zype Acquires MAZ Systems to Extend Leading Video API and Infrastructure Platform with No-Code TV and Mobile App Publishing Framework

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VOD: Improving Your OTT Workflow - Streaming Media On Demand Webinar

Netflix Tech Stack: Breaking Down Netflix's OTT Architecture

OTT Distribution: Breaking Down the Build vs Buy Strategies

Free Ad Supported Streaming: Tap Into the Massive Audience Behind the Free TV Movement

Level Up Your Apple TV Apps With Zype's Updated Template

25 Linear TV & OTT Statistics That Will Shock You (2020 Edition)

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